State of the Church 2012

Looking Back

Thankful for today…A Generous Community

Global

Local

Church Planting

Looking Forward in Faith

All In Together

Missional Community

Thoughtfully Engage

Facility Execution

One Question: Are we Satisfied?

I know this feeling fills our epoch, and I think it freezes our epoch. For our titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?

GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: NY, Image books, 1959) 71. Originally published: New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1908.

14Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 15Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. 16Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. 17Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!

Psalm 90:14-17

Community Prayer

This week we ask you to pray for the beginning of our new ministry year at Jaocb’s Well.

• Pray for our church to love and serve others well through our missional communities.
• Pray that people would meet Jesus and be transformed by the power of the Spirit this year.
• Pray for our marriages, families and church family to have unity, a spirit of grace for one another and courage to walk in the light together.
• Pray that we would grow in depth of understanding, love and joy in Jesus and boldness to follow God in his mission.
• Pray for us to be a generous people with our time, talents and treasure.